Checking Out Your Cab Driver By Cameraphone
from the just-in-case-he's-crazy dept
In a world of crazy cab drivers, it appears that some people are a bit afraid to ride cabs these days. Apparently, folks in South Korea have decided this is a big problem and therefore are planning to stick special cameraphone-enabled barcodes inside and outside of cabs, so that riders can snap a quick photo, and "text-message it to their friends or family." The technology, of course, isn't new. Barcodes that can be recognized by cameraphones have been used in a variety of places to help merge the digital and analog worlds by allowing you to "click" on something tangible. Because of that, it always seemed likely that completely unexpected applications would show up -- however, it's not clear how this makes much sense. Are people really going to snap a photo and send it to friends and family when they get in a cab? And, wouldn't it be even more useful if snapping a photo of the barcode gave you some info about the driver to make you feel safer? Of course, even that wouldn't be too helpful, because bad or dangerous drivers would simply alter the barcode or take someone else's. So, really, it seems like this has limited usefulness based on the current plan, unless the article has left out some important details.
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It's sad but this is fairly common in security. People think of cool ideas, using cool technology and forget to check back to reality.
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agreed
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sounds bogus
This sounds like a conspired release of "tech-byte" to help NYC and other cities accomplish the goal of convincing the public to allow GPS in cabs, despite protests about the invasiveness on cab drivers.
If people get frightened enough and start bitching about the ineffectiveness of camera-phon bar-codes, they'll demand "safety precautions" that actually DO work; totally forgetting the fact that cab drivers are the least of our problem when it comes to crime.
This is an issue of privacy, NOT safety. What's next? camera's INSIDE the cabs to scan every single passenger for terrorist intent?
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